Posts Tagged ‘chase scenes’

There was nothing good playing (that I hadn’t already seen), so I went to see “From Paris With Love” Tuesday night.

This movie is a spy/action movie. The plot is super thin, the action is ridiculous, and the dialog is childish. I kept waiting for the movie to get serious and become a “movie”, but it never did.

Maybe I was just in the mood for mindless action and silly jokes, but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Everything was so over the top that I was able to watch it like a cartoon.

Sure, it had a couple of requisite car chases that would have bored me had I not used to opportunity to check my emails and text messages. There is gore, blood, and scores of dead people, but, it’s so cartoon-ish that it nary mattered a whit.

This is a great action/comedy popcorn movie. It’s probably not the best “date” movie. (You’ll understand if you see it. 🙂 )

I give it a 7 out of 10, but, with the warning that this is not an intellectual movie.

I was reluctant to see this movie because I imagined it to be stuffy. I also didn’t like the trailer because it looked to be to horror-centric. To provide a clue for how much I didn’t want to see this film, I even went to see Leap Year on a previous week to avoid this film.

However, two of my siblings persuaded me to give it a try and so I found myself in the back row at six in the evening.
The beginning started out the way a film should never start out, but how action fans and directors like to start films, in a chase scene. I’m not a big fan of chase scenes and it’s a huge turn-off for me.
(By the way, for an example of how to start off a movie with action and not bore the audience to tears, study the opening scene of “The Dark Knight”.)

As the film progressed I found myself enjoying it more and more. I dislike fantasy movies, so every time something fantastical occurred on the screen I worried that it would conclude with a non-scientific reason. This nervousness degraded the film experience for me.

I left the film not feeling very positive about the film. I debated internally between a 5 and a 5.5 as I prepared to walk to the train. On the train though, my opinion of the film went up a tad. The film was interesting enough.

Chase scenes are a big waste of time in films because they tell nothing to the audience other than one person is chasing another.
They are often shot with close ups, so you get no perspective on how close or far the chaser is from the chased. This is especially true when the camera doesn’t stay in one place, but instead keeps flashing between the two people.
Too often the two figures are clad in the same or similar clothing or objects and we can’t really tell who is whom. For example, both characters will be wear black suits and the lighting will be dark. Good luck with that.

When I see a chase scene developing I usually get bored and wait for it to end so I can figure out what happened. Trying to understand if the chased is getting away or is being apprehended during a chase scene is a waste of my time.